Commentary: COGA and the FOG

LOUISVILLE—Questions from members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) peppered Cindy Bolbach at their meeting in Louisville on October 3. Bolbach, an attorney and co-chair of the Form of Government (FOG) Task Force, was not so much pressed as queried. COGA members seemed to lean toward supporting the FOG Task Force’s proposed total rewrite of Presbyterian polity but they brought some obvious concerns and questions to this session.

Cindy Bolbach, co-chair of the Form of Government Task Force, addresses the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly

The FOG Task Force’s major task, according to Bolbach, “was how we can create a polity that helps us preach the Word more effectively.” That purpose sounded orthodox and noble, even if it was difficult to see how exactly the proposed FOG text advanced it. Indeed, the alleged shortcomings of the present Form of Government in the PCUSA Book of Order were never truly demonstrated, other than the fact that the book is long and perhaps sometimes confusing in unnamed, undocumented ways. It supposedly gets in the way of ministry, but no one has yet said how so in concrete terms. Indeed, the case for the need to upset the polity apple cart has never been made. We seem to be getting change for change’s sake.

“We were given a charge by the 217th General Assembly (2006) to preserve our foundational polity,” Bolbach noted. She contended that the task force had fulfilled that charge, although it has drastically cut, reordered, and reworded the classic and treasured first four chapters of the present Form of Government. “We changed it some and reorganized it to make it more accessible,” Bolbach explained. In addition, the General Assembly stipulated that the present sections on ordination standards (G-6.0106b) and property ownership (G-8.0201) were to remain untouched, and they have, in principle.

“We have managed to meet our deadlines,” Bolbach assured COGA. This assertion was true only in part. In 2006, the General Assembly had clearly stipulated, “The FOG Task Force will release the proposed revision of the Form of Government including advisory handbooks by September 1, 2007.” However, a draft finally was released on September 19, nearly three weeks late.

And what’s more, that September 19 draft was not released as the final proposed revision. The draft is subject to further modifications up to February 22, beyond when presbyteries could submit overtures to amend the proposal. Thus, yes, the FOG Task Force had managed to bring its tinkering to a temporary end before September 1, but it had failed to plan for formatting and production. And that process consumed another three weeks of time intended for public inspection of the work.

First We’ll Abandon the Stragglers
“I like to start with the congregation,” Bolbach stated, as she listed some of the significant changes the FOG revision would effect. “I wear the hat of a clerk of session,” she said, and that role led Bolbach to announce perhaps her favorite revision of the present FOG. “We eliminated inactive members,” she proclaimed, chuckling. “I thought if ever there was an oxymoronic term, it was ‘inactive member.'” When Bolbach would compile her church’s annual statistical report for the General Assembly, she recounted, “I was supposed to write how many inactive members we have. And I thought, ‘How am I supposed to know? They’re not around!'” COGA laughed heartily.

Perhaps COGA should have cringed, however. Cindy Bolbach—a bright attorney, an experienced elder and stated clerk of her session, the co-chair of the FOG Task Force, this expert on Presbyterian polity who is helping compose a radical new Form of Government—did not seem to comprehend her responsibility for maintaining an inactive members’ roll (G-10.0302a(3)(a)) in her church, or what the purpose is for designating some members as “inactive.”

She obviously had not understood that the inactive member designation is intended in our present Form of Government to provide sessions a two-year opportunity for special pastoral care “to accomplish [the inactive member’s] restoration as an active member” (G-10.0302b(7))—an intentional caring emphasis that Bolbach apparently is rather gleefully seeking to eliminate.

The idea behind inactive membership is to acknowledge the reality of the impending loss of members and to bring those fading members back into activity in “the work and worship of the church.” Wouldn’t you think that a denomination losing around 50,000 members a year might want to take a look at pastorally retaining some of those members?

The New FOG Would Change Much
Continuing her account of changes the new FOG would bring, Bolbach said the FOG Task Force wanted to leave “functions and not structure” in the new FOG. “We’ve taken out all the committees,” she confided, arguing that “committees can do effective work without being named.” For instance, COGA would not be named in the new constitution, “but you guys do pretty effective work,” she added. “We didn’t want to say that there is a rule that fits every congregation, every session, every presbytery across the denomination.” So committees are out, but they can be laboriously reinvented by governing bodies if they so choose.

Next Bolbach hit a sore spot, but she wanted COGA to know it up front. The new G-2.0304 would possibly allow an interim pastor to become the next installed pastor upon a three-fourths vote of the presbytery. This new exception would break a cardinal rule now that temporary pastors cannot feather their own nest in order to become the eventual installed pastor. “We wanted presbyteries to have greater flexibility,” Bolbach explained. “Part of our commission was to grant greater flexibility at all levels.”

The Committee on the Office of the General Assembly listens to Cindy Bolbach (in yellow) speak on major proposed changes to the Book of Order. Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick (blue shirt) is second on Bolbach’s left, and COGA Chair Catherine Ulrich (white jacket) is on the far right.

The FOG Task Force set about changing fundamental language, too. “We wanted to come up with some term other than ‘governing body,'” Bolbach noted. “We’re not about being a board of directors, so we came up with ‘council,’ a historical term about when Christians come together to pray and make decisions.”

In the same manner, the term “ordered ministry” replaces “office,” because Presbyterian leaders “do not ‘hold office’; they do ministry. And they do not have some office-holding power over other members.” Similarly, the new FOG would return to the terms “ruling elder” (for elders) and “teaching elder” (for pastors) “to reemphasize one of the great strengths of the Reformation,” Bolbach explained.

“Why should we do this?” Bolbach asked. “Don’t we have more important things to do?” One wonders.

“Isn’t this like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?” she pressed. “No,” she answered, “it’s more like finding the icebergs out there.” Bolbach emphasized that we cannot go on acting as if we Christians were the majority in our culture. “We need to come up with a polity that allows the church to preach the Word as effectively as possible,” she reiterated. One only wishes that she had said how these polity adjustments accomplish anything at all related to being a missional church, anything at all that would propel Presbyterian churches into returning to our passion for the lost and proclaiming salvation in Jesus Christ alone.

Instead, Bolbach returned to the task at hand: changing the PCUSA constitution. “The FOG Task Force will use this time between now and November to listen,” she assured the COGA members. It is a rather brief time—September 19 through November 15—for such a broad subject as the complete overhaul of our entire system of government. But who knows, Bolbach admitted, “there could be something totally wrong that we haven’t heard about.” With that tantalizing morsel, Bolbach opened the floor to questions from COGA.

Plumbers in the FOG
Questions by the COGA members indicated a loyalist tendency to go along with the FOG revision, with a measure of nervousness that certain weak points might sink the entire FOG ship. In addition, some COGA members voiced personal hesitation about parts of the radical rewrite. In general, however, they acted like plumbers out to fix the leaks in the FOG proposal.

COGA member John Purcell was concerned with “how long it will take us to return to 427 cubic feet of the Book of Order” if the new FOG is approved. “I wish there was some way to put an extra step in the amending process,” he commented. He noted that the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) requires a second vote of its assembly after a proposed amendment returns from regional votes.

Bolbach responded that the FOG Task Force had “mostly talked about the foundations section. We need to have the church live with it for a while.” The new FOG would not allow the foundations section to be amended for six years. The inadvisability of dropping a whole new and untried polity on the church and then making it practically unchangeable if any parts proved unworkable never came up.

“The problem we’ve had,” Bolbach contended “is that the church has sought to amend the Book of Order as the solution to the problems we have.” She did not like that way of operating. “No, you solve the problem by going out with your congregation to do ministry,” she contended. And if your ministry requires you to do something different—such as rewrite the FOG—then Bolbach would be all for the change!

Dennis Hughes, a COGA member from Seattle, lamented that currently there is not much help for immigrant fellowships. Many fellowships are led by elders, such as certified lay pastors, because indigenous pastors have not yet emerged. But the fellowships themselves cannot ordain elders. So where do the elders come from?

In Seattle, Hughes said, “we’ve solved that by elected ruling elders in host churches precisely to serve in immigrant congregations. That’s their ministry.” But it’s an “insincere shenanigan we have to go through to get them elected,” Hughes lamented. “So we may need to have presbytery able to elect elders.” Bolbach noted his suggestion.

Barbara Campbell Davis wanted to beat the drum for a subject often before the General Assembly and just as often turned down: a third ordained office for Christian educators. “This is the time to get up and do it!” she exhorted Bolbach and, obliquely, her fellow COGA members. “Be bold!”

“That is one change we decided not to broach,” Bolbach replied candidly.

General Assembly Moderator Joan Gray asked about terminology: “Did you consider the word ‘judicatories’ for ‘governing bodies’?” The FOG Task Force had settled on “councils” instead. “‘Judicatory’ warms my heart,” Gray drawled with a smile, “but because it has five syllables, is that why you rejected it?”

“‘Council’ seemed to warm our hearts,” Bolbach countered. “It was somewhat serendipitous.” What Bolbach did not add is that the idea for “councils” to name church governing bodies was the suggestion of Joseph Small, denominational Director of Theology, Worship, and Education. His arguments had swayed the FOG Task Force in August.

But Gray had bigger fish to fry. “I have had a large investment in interim pastor matters,” she said, “and I hope with all my heart that this [new option for interims to be called as the installed pastor] does not end up intact in the Form of Government.”

“I’m sure we will have more discussion on this” was Bolbach’s neutral response. “We sent it out as a draft for comment and we got less comment than expected. Now we may get more!”

“I 99 percent agree with Joan,” chimed in John Purcell. “I would rather err on the side of blanket disapproval [of interims becoming called as pastors] than approval.”

“But we said that presbyteries can make their own rules,” Bolbach reminded COGA. “Okay, do we all trust presbyteries to make the right decision?”

From the uncertain looks on COGA faces, the answer was probably a tentative no. “What is it that we have learned from secular law?” Gray asked in good Socratic fashion. “Hard cases make bad law.”

Purcell, who is serving as an interim pastor in a Lutheran church, also reported that the association for interim pastors “is already lined up in opposition” to this new provision in the draft FOG.

When COGA member Helen Cochrane asked how this new FOG would express connectionalism, Bolbach proposed that connectionalism occurs “not by polity but by how you motivate people to serve on other levels.” Bolbach’s answer seemed to be making lemonade out of the lemon here, because the new FOG would almost certainly diminish Presbyterian connectionalism. Most policies and procedures would not be common from council to council, but rather would be different and unique in every council, leading to a patchwork quilt of practices.

The FOG Task Force had previously visited the General Assembly Council (GAC), as it was now briefing COGA. “GAC two weeks ago passed a resolution recommending the General Assembly not take action on FOG next year, so what is the task force reaction?” asked Kent Grimes of COGA.

As Bolbach understood it, that GAC resolution arose out of “fear that there would not be enough time to understand” the new FOG and its implications, and so there was a danger that the proposal might be summarily dismissed. But Bolbach was not ready to let go of a June 2008 decision point. “I hope the FOG Task Force can use the time to think creatively about what we can do between now and June,” she proposed. “Some people believe this has been kind of dropped on them…. The rest of the church is off doing the business of the church. Our task is to try to communicate the polity as best we can.”

Steve Grace, former chair of COGA, pointed out his perception that the new FOG “places the entire emphasis of councils above the session on supporting the local congregation, making it their main and maybe exclusive ministry.” Serving congregations is important, he noted, but “the current policy is that God calls each council to its own ministry, interdependent on the other ministries.”

Grace seemed to be arguing for the old-line idea that presbyteries, synods, and the General Assembly need to do the work of the church on behalf of the congregations. Sometimes that work has even been in spite of the congregations, one might add. “There’s the example of the prophetic [i.e., political] witness that a particular council is called to do,” Grace continued. “There may be times when God is calling some councils to do something different than supporting congregations and sessions.”

“If you don’t see it in the draft,” Bolbach replied, “maybe we need to go back and emphasize it.” Thus, a reintroduction or perhaps highlighting of politically activist councils is something to watch for in the final draft of the FOG proposal, to be produced by late February.

The Stated Clerk Knows Politics
“The interim pastor conversation brought back to me the experience of taking chapter 14 [of the present Form of Government] to General Assembly and getting it voted down,” mused Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly. He learned something in that process, which resulted in a very narrow approval of the new chapter 14 on another try in 2006. Kirkpatrick’s suggestion? “Find the triggers” that would get the whole thing killed. Identify them and get them pulled out, “so the whole structure could be approved.” Then, perhaps, the provisions could be added back in at a later date.

“Do the preliminary work of finding the ten to fifteen things that would sabotage the whole effort,” the Stated Clerk advised. “Without doing that, there is no way you can move this forward.” Bolbach then asked for a list of what those triggers might be.

Associate Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons brought up per capita apportionments, which, to the surprise of many, are absent in the new FOG proposal. Mission budgets and per capita budgets get rolled into one omnibus budget (see the final paragraph of 3.0107 in the proposed FOG), and presbyteries would have the right to “apportion requested funds to sessions within their bounds.” In other words, congregations, which are now generally expected to pay per capita, could end up being strongly urged to pay some apportioned share of the presbytery, synod, and General Assembly combined mission and per capita budgets. But it is never called per capita in the new FOG.

Parsons spoke of this year being “the 200th anniversary of per capita.” He mentioned a “fairness issue.” Concerning terminology, he counseled that “somehow ‘essential operational functions’ is not a very effective substitute for ‘per capita,’ and you might want to look at other language.” And, like Kirkpatrick, Parsons had political advice: “Find the things that would take a good work and cause it not to pass. If they could be eliminated, the document could still stand.”

Along those lines, COGA Chair Catherine Ulrich broached considering a gradualist approach. She asked, “Are there things like interims that you would consider backing out of” and then introducing at a later assembly?

“No,” was Bolbach’s reply. As a task force, “we didn’t expect to continue,” she explained. “The idea of doing a basic version and then an add-on–we didn’t talk about that at all. We did talk about hot-button issues and don’t want it to be shot down because of them.”

Where’s the Improvement?
One COGA member got down to brass tacks: “You talk about being more flexible, but I’m not sure that’s the heart of it.”

This remark gave Bolbach an opportunity to preach the basics. “This [new FOG] is a constitution,” she began, “and what we have now is a hodge-podge of constitution and regulation. We need to go back to it being a constitution. Much of the structure remains the same and in that sense the change is not radical. However, it does hopefully give councils flexibility.”

Bolbach gave an example from her experience. “Whenever in session someone says, ‘Let’s do this,’ someone else says, ‘But the Book of Order says you can’t’ or ‘You have to do it this way.'” That was a telling example, perhaps saying more about misperceptions of our present Book of Order than about the Book of Order’s supposed failings. One seriously doubts that an allegedly iron-clad constitution is the major factor holding back Presbyterians from flowering as an effective, growing, missional church!

“Whether or not this [new FOG] brings us back to where we were 50 years ago, I don’t know,” Bolbach acknowledged. Then she held up the present Book of Order, a substantial paperback. She also held up the present “cross-reference guide,” which looked like a brief brochure. And she said, holding up the cross-reference guide, “This should be the constitution,” and, holding up the Book of Order, “This should be the reference.” In other words, the relative length and complexity of the two works should be reversed.

In conclusion, Doska Ross, a manager in the Department of Constitutional Services, encouraged COGA “to look at the two documents. See how much of the fundamental language is still there. Take a few minutes. Take a half hour.”

Between Bolbach and Ross, there was a little understatement going on. First, the new FOG runs 43 pages in small print, so it is hardly the size of a brochure. Second, careful study of the new FOG entails comparison with the present FOG, in order to see what is lost and what is changed. The comparison document runs 169 tedious pages!

So unless one is willing to make a crucial, pivotal, weighty decision after a mere glance at complex papers, one would need, to paraphrase Ross, to look at the old and the new FOG documents side by side. See how much of the fundamental language is changed or lost. Take half a week.

Or, better yet, walk through the new FOG in small pieces with polity wonk Bob Davis in his Presbyblog (see the blog, beginning with September 17, 2007). Davis finds the salient issues and explains their implications like no other commentator.